What are your dreams telling you?
Dreams hold keys to our waking reality and speak to us through sensations and symbology.
In the dream, I was getting off the plane.
I was on the phone, asking my friend Beth (who lives in Seattle) if she could pick me up after a trip out of country.
“Where is your car?’ She asked me.
I considered for a moment and realized I had no idea. How could I have lost my car and have no memory of where I parked? But then it occurred to me that I also did not know where the keys were and upon asking the question, I reached down and whipped them out of my coochie!
The keys jingled joyfully and I awoke.
I’ve been feeling a bit frozen for about 2 weeks now. Freeze is one of the physiological reactions that we have to fear, stress, threat or trauma. Though there have been no significant threats to my personhood in a while (and certainly not in the last couple of weeks) nonetheless, the feeling was there. So instead of trying to push it away, push through, or ignore it I have been tending, resting, and practicing curious, compassionate inquiry. The same process I engage with clients.
Compassionate inquiry, as a process, involves slowing down, taking account of our inner world, feelings, and recent or past events that might be playing into the state we are in.
To engage in compassionate inquiry we might ask:
“How does my breath feel as its moving? Is it smooth or is it getting stuck? What do I notice in my body? Do I feel safe? What are my dreams expressing?”
Well, the dream sure was curious and the outer events played right into its theme.
On the way home from my lover's, the check engine light on my car began flashing.
As I shifted from 5th to 4th and down to 3rd, as is required for the winding road, the car felt like it dragged under its own momentum and my heart began to race.
I have “check engine” PTSD.
On my way home from picking my mom up from Texas in 2020 (during the pandemic!) the engine on this car blew. It was a combination of driver-error: hard and hot driving conditions, and “what the fuck?” I had the oil changed shortly before I left, but just outside of Monument, CO the check engine light flashed red, we pulled over as fast as possible, discovered the oil had gone bone dry. We attempted to fill it with the assistance of some roadside, road-crew angels, but alas. It was too late.
In a feat of genuinely altruistic near-miracle hood—between the benevolence of my mom and her husband, some friends, and the incredible generosity of my social media community—I was able to purchase a new engine for my car.
However, six months later, that engine went kaput in the driveway at my lover’s place, that same cute little cabin on the other side of the pass that I was returning home from the other day. We had it towed to a local mechanic and I tracked down someone who was willing to help at the company who had sold me the engine (even though it was just 2 weeks past its six-month warranty date).
I struck a deal with the company and the mechanic that I would pay for the labor and the engine distributors would provide the parts. So a month went by and once the engine was finally put in it was defective. A bunch of phone calls and a full month later another engine was procured, installed, and my silver Subaru was finally on the road again.
So now, with this history, you can understand the PTSD-like reaction I have to my check engine light coming on. My heart races, my palms sweat, my mind zips to “When did I last check my fluids?” I knew that it had been maybe a week so that didn’t worry me this time and upon getting over the pass and back to my place, picking up my cat (we’ll get to that) I popped into O’ Riley’s Auto Parts to have them run a diagnostics and assure me that I wasn’t going to damage my car by continuing to drive it.
So the cat…
My cat, Odin, likes to scrap. He is a hooligan. A few nights prior to the car shenanigans I had been petting him and came across what I had initially thought was a scab on his forehead. He seemed sensitive to it so I let it be only to encounter the same spot the following night and realize it was, in fact, not a scab—but another cat’s claw embedded in his face. Ew.
Around the same time I found a small swollen spot under his chin which proceeded to get steadily worse until he had scratched it open, hence winding up in his cat carrier as I had the engine light checked.
Forward and onward to the vet where he was sedated, stitched, pumped full of antibiotics, painkillers, and an update on his rabies shot. Le fucking sigh. It took a series of phone calls to find a mechanic for my car. And then 2 days later we were back at the vet for another round of stitches.
So, yes, some stress. But not freeze level stress, really. It used to be that when my man and I wouldn’t talk for a bit I would get overrun by anxiety. Not so much. After a couple of years of doing the dance we do in the way we do it, I’m fairly secure in its rhythm. I’m finally unraveling my deep-seated habit of catrastrophizing the fuck out of everything.
No, Chicken Little, the sky is not actually falling.
It may be smoky as hell and, yes, that can contribute to feelings of exhaustion and even anxiety for me. And with the car not being driveable (temporarily) and the cat being essentially quarantined, I settled in to tend to whatever the fuck is going on with me.
The dreams though…
I am a vivid dreamer, myself, and I work with clients to help them decipher the symbols of their dreams.
Our dreamworld is a portal to our unconscious and somatic realities. Dreams are a way to make connections between our waking world and our felt, lived and remembered experiences. Dreams pass through our body, connect us to our past and (in some instances) our future.
There are all kinds of dreams and several dreaming states they can be birthed from.
We can have waking dreams or visions. We can have deep-sleep dreams that, for many people, occur in the early hours of morning when we are most likely to enter a REM sleep. We can have liminal dreams. Those are the ones that occur between that waking and sleeping state. They are often mingled with semi-conscious thoughts and body signals. It is that liminal state where we will get that feeling of falling and then being jerked awake. Our bodies are still, but our minds are restless. And maybe our souls are on the move!
Then there are lucid dreams where we can tell ourselves, in the dream, that we are dreaming and, in some cases, take some control of the dream’s direction.
There are the less than pleasant dreaming states of nightmares and even sleep paralysis, a state that was once considered to be caused by demons, specifically, incubi and succubi. These more perturbed dreaming states, however, can still offer us rich material to work with as they provide us with the opportunity to confront our shadow and even resolve transpersonal conflict.
If I had to take a stab at what my own dream was telling me: “Slow down and tend” is pretty clear and that is what I was forced into due to the external circumstances of car and cat. More than that, though. I have, for some time, practiced what I call “being womb-led.” This is a deeply embodied practice where I let the magnetic pull of my womb guide me to the people, circumstances, and even creative endeavors that are most in alignment with me.
My womb—even more than my heart—is my engine.
Being reminded in the dream that “the keys are in my coochie” and that I need to remember where I parked (cars have always been symbolic of my relationship with my body) ties so beautifully with the need to tend the check engine light in my waking world. And, not only that, but my cat, Odin, is most certainly my own little witch’s familiar.
So all of these symbols from these dreams are really saying to me: “Mind your magic, witch!” A potent message and gratefully received.
Are you curious about your own dreams, the deeper symbolic nature of reality, the impact of archetypes myths, and stories on your psyche?
If so you may want to check out the 8 week online course I am offering. We will begin Samhain, October 31 and dream, learn, heal, and grow—together—through December 21, Winter Solstice. These are the 8 darkest weeks of the year; perfect for dreaming!
The course will include 1:1 sessions, group meetings, a shared online space, and rituals. This is the most affordable way to work with me 1:1 that I have created and you get the support of a community of dreamers.
Check out my site for early bird pricing through October 15.
I would absofuckinglutley love to dream with you!
Thanks so much for staying connected. Feel free to reach out anytime if you have any questions about how my work may be of further benefit to you or just to say, “Hi!”
Lotsa love,
~Justice
Dreaming Our Way to Wakefulness.
Love this dream piece Justice! I fund dreams interesting, intriguing, sometimes frightening, sometimes answers and then the what the heck was that. I enjoyed reading this and thank you.
I'm more of a waking dreamer often in the wee hours in the "second sleep" intermission, so-called by Elizabethan journalists. Other people's dreams intrigue me though.
I've been privy to quite a few of Justice's dreams and analyses. This is a practice worth pursuing and one that can transform our world from the inside, out!